Inside Meta's acquisition of Manus AI: Revenue, features and the race against ChatGPT

Meta announced on Monday that it will acquire Manus, a startup specialising in artificial intelligence. The tech giant is rapidly expanding its platforms to incorporate advanced AI.

Although the financial terms of the transaction were not publicly disclosed, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters that the deal could value the Singapore-based firm at $2-3 billion.

This acquisition comes as several tech giants are racing to develop and deploy advanced AI technologies, aiming to gain an edge in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape.

As Meta navigates fierce industry competition, the company is making strategic investments in AI. Earlier this year, the Facebook parent company invested in Scale AI, a data labelling startup valued at $29 billion, and also brought on its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang.

Can this startup's chatbot compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT?

Founded in China, Manus went viral early this year on X (formerly Twitter) after it launched what it called the world's first general AI agent, a program that can make decisions and get things done on its own, thereby needing much less prompting than AI chatbots like ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

These capabilities led commentators and tech enthusiasts to call it China's next DeepSeek, and it even received praise from Chinese state television, Reuters reported.

Manus, whose services are not available in China, claims its AI agent outperforms OpenAI's DeepResearch. Meta plans to operate and sell the Manus service, integrating it into its consumer and business products, including Meta AI, the company said.

Why Manus is a hot topic in the silicon valley?

Manus has been making waves in Silicon Valley since it debuted last spring with a demo video showing its AI agent performing tasks such as screening job candidates, planning vacations, and analysing stock portfolios, according to TechCrunch.

Meta told the news outlet that it will keep Manus operating independently, while the startup’s AI agents will be integrated into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, alongside Meta’s existing chatbot, Meta AI, which is already available to users.

Manus also recently announced that it has millions of users and earns an annual recurring revenue of more than $100 million from monthly and yearly subscribers.

For Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, this matters because it is an AI product that generates revenue, which is crucial at a time when investors are concerned about Meta's $60 billion investment in data centres and the broader tech industry's costly AI development, according to TechCrunch.